You know this is going to be an uphill struggle

[MhBlis]

So I finally bought and reinstalled X-com after 4 years and having played it so often I though I'd start out on Veteran setting. Things are looking bad for this game right from the start.

 

The signs things are not in x-coms favor:

After having started my research, rebuilt my base, hired, fired and renamed my troops I felt ready to roll. Jan 3 I shoot down a very small ship and off I go for my first underwater mission. My tank just clears the exit hatch when suddenly out of the dark ( knew I should have waited to daylight) I hear an ominous sound followed by a projectile that misses the tank and explodeds in the middle of all my troops. X-com 0 - Aliens 10 men , 1 Tank, 1 Leviathan, 1 World.

 

So game one ends with us not even seeing an alien but them hitting us with a DPL.

 

 

Game two goes much better we near the end of Feb when suddenly we have a base attack. Considering my men are still wielding Gas cannons and Dart pistols this was always going to be an uphill battle. What didnt help was that it turned out that of my 4 men not one could survive more than a single attempt at mind control. Victory was somehow achieved without loss when Jimmy; my scout; was MC, marched out to end the lives of the squad and promptly shot both alien squad leaders in the back of the head due to poor accuracy.

 

 

This game continues in March but we have a new tactic of stunning everything tha looks like it's moving due to the fact that every enemy is now a Lobsterman or Tasoth.

 

 

I remeber TFTD being tough but never this nuts. Still great fun game.

 

So share your signs that X-com may not win the war.

 

Edited for spelling

[NKF]

You're on your way to tolerance mastery of Superhuman!

 

The start of a TFTD campaign is generally the hardest. But once you start bringing in some better technology, the playing field does even out. It's no less difficult, but at least you've got more toys to play with.

 

For me, perhaps the first appearance of the Lobstermen is when I am most nervous. At the stage, I'm still racing to keep my technology up to date and making use of what little I've managed to gather. If you haven't played the game in a while, I find you're also relearning how to fight against them. But in time I find I start to enjoy meeting them the most thanks to the fact they are purely about combat, with none of that MC nonsense.

 

One good thing about TFTD is that the MC.-Lab can be obtained very early into the game. It gives you a chance to start screening your troops before the Tasoth become more common. Aquatoids and the rare Gillman Commander are a pain as they're stronger than Tasoth, but at least with them the number of MC users are generally lower.

 

- NKF

[Bomb Bloke]

Losing a whole campaign, unintentionally, on your very first move? That's gotta be, like, some sort of record!

 

(By the way, if you shoot down a sub, you always have, and always should take, the time to wait for day - the only exceptions are those rare instances where you've just shot down a whole group of alien vessels, but in those cases your monthly score will already be so high that it doesn't matter if you even turn up...)

 

Jimmy's MC strength must've been so low it underflowed.

 

As NKF says, most of the challenge goes away once the tech tree gets fleshed out a bit - even if you don't unlock MC powers for your own troops, at which point they're more or less immortal.

 

One of the (various) things I dislike about TFTD is the lack of diversity in the race department. Just about every alien it has is a direct copy of a UFO:EU race, but one of the "master" races was demoted to "terror unit" status: Meaning that UFOs are typically only manned by one of four races, instead of five.

[MhBlis]

Lobestermen has always been the the greatest enemy unit any game every. I can't think of anything else which has given me so much fun and grief.

 

Though having them appear before I even had chance to reasearch sonic pistols has been tough. Luckily the shock bombs arrived eary and I can just saturate areas with my rookie agents. Luckily the end of march has seen the appearence of the MC lab I'm just hopeing I can get it built before April so I can get some guys tested.

 

Though Jimmy with his low low score wont get dumped. Every X-com team needs a Jimmy. He gets armed with a pistol and goes screamming about the level to find all the aliens. His job is to draw fire so we know where everythng else is hiding. Mission 25 and he has yet to get killed or even hit. It's just like old times.

 

My Jimmy concept is form evey vietnam movie and cop movie where the partner gets shot and the Hero screams out Jimmy NOOOOOO.

 

I'm hoping to start work on my hand weapons since they are in deperate need seeing as producing that many shock bombs is getting expensive.

 

Man I love a game thats actually hard and I still have two whole levels of it to go.

[MhBlis]

i did forget to mention that my wife got stunned and left behind on a terror mission. There were some words and now a little note to remind me to carry unconcouse team members into phase two.

[Alienated]

After having started my research, rebuilt my base, hired, fired and renamed my troops I felt ready to roll. Jan 3 I shoot down a very small ship and off I go for my first underwater mission. My tank just clears the exit hatch when suddenly out of the dark ( knew I should have waited to daylight) I hear an ominous sound followed by a projectile that misses the tank and explodeds in the middle of all my troops. X-com 0 - Aliens 10 men , 1 Tank, 1 Leviathan, 1 World.

 

So game one ends with us not even seeing an alien but them hitting us with a DPL.

I can't believe it. You can't get a Leviathan at Jan 3 2040. It was probably a Triton. And aliens never use DPL on small sized subs. It was probably a sonic pulser thrown on a strange trajectory in order to hit your squad. Was it a reaction shot? If it was, then it couldn't be a grenade either, but then you were just a victim of some sort of bug.

 

Waiting for daylight not always helps. You get darkness depending on depth at crash recoveries. And alien sub assaults randomly get light or dark sites, so it is wise to save before landing and if you get a dark site, then keep reloading game until you get a light one. There are some terrains (volcanic and underwater facility) which always have many light spots, those can be done easily in night missions too.

 

My remark for the topic itself is that the first mission is almost always hard/dark because you don't have chemical flares in your stores by default. You have to wait for the supply for hours which is late. If you build your base in an area where the first alien sub lands in night time, then you don't have any choice but shoot down the sub at shallow depth and wait for daylight but that can bring about a floating base attack and relying on your poor short range detection it may happen that you can't notice either the survey ship or the dreadnought and lose your base because you for example are on a crash site mission. And I must add that your default barracuda equipment is ajax+gas cannon, and it is almost impossible to shoot down the Escort before it lands without reloading game about ten or more times.

[MhBlis]

Yeah that was a typo i did mean Triton. And sadly yes it was a reaction shot though I've seen DPLs on small subs all the time. I actually go out expecting it. Though will gillmen you never really worry since they like to shoot those things point blank into walls.

 

 

 

I know I could just wait for light but that feels like cheating to me. same with reloading for a better terrain.

[NKF]

Don't worry, I think a lot of us knew what you meant.

 

As for the mystery DPL, it very well could have been a sonic pulser. For some unknown reason, aliens in UFO and TFTD play a gun firing sound when they throw grenades. If it coincided with the end of their turn, it would definitely look like a DPL attack.

 

I'm not 100% au fait with what ships carry DPLs, but it's generally the larger ships that have them like the terror ship, Dreadnought as well as the Fleet Supply Cruiser.

 

- NKF

[MhBlis]

DPL since it was part way through the first move of my turn. Grenade also just wont have the right trajectory since it hit near tha back wall.

 

 

It may just be uncommon but I found another player that saw DPLs in the first month on a different forum. and there is an LP somewhere on the web ( I lost the address which sux since it was a great piece of writing) which had Aquatoid with one in late Jan/early Feb. They were playing in veteran mode as well.

Cost them 8 of their 10 Men.

 

 

 

I mean TFTD was never that stable specially v1.0 when it came to doing things the way it's suppose to.

[Zombie]

I'm not 100% au fait with what ships carry DPLs, but it's generally the larger ships that have them like the terror ship, Dreadnought as well as the Fleet Supply Cruiser.

Ships which can have DPL's, and rank which carries them:

 

Heavy Cruiser: Technician, Navigator
Hunter: Soldier, Medic, Navigator
Battleship: Squad Leader, Technician
Dreadnought: Soldier, Commander
Fleet Supply Cruiser: Technician
Alien Colony: Navigator, Commander

Note: Just because I list Squad Leaders and Techs carry DPL's on a Battleship, it doesn't mean that all Squad Leaders and Techs will be carrying them. In this case it's not both, it's or. It depends on which loadout the game chose. The same goes for some of the other ships as well.

 

Survey Ships, Escorts and Crusiers NEVER have ranks which will carry DPL's. At least this is true for an unmodified CE executable. I have no idea if the DOS exe is different or if XcomUtil is messing with the loadouts or difficulty levels. M'kay?

 

DPL since it was part way through the first move of my turn. Grenade also just wont have the right trajectory since it hit near tha back wall.

Not necessarily. The Triton has gaping holes in it's MCD array for the East side of the ship. A lucky throw of a Sonic Pulser by the aliens and it'll roll right through or detonate outside and let the explosion propagate inside. And like NKF mentions, there is a bug with Sonic Pulsers which makes them sound like DPL's when thrown.

 

- Zombie

[Alienated]

Survey Ships, Escorts and Cruisers NEVER have ranks which will carry DPL's.

Even Survey Ships may carry a squad leader, and technicians may show up on Cruisers. However, I've never found DPL on small subs, not even in the end of the year when almost everybody has DPL on medium and large ships. It has got to be some modified game. Aliens never do reaction shots with DPL. This story is suspicious.

 

And I noticed the staff on alien subs is race dependant. For example a gill man Escort has only soldiers, an aquatoid Escort has suad leaders and soldiers.

 

(All of these pieces of experience originates from the PSX version.)

 

Maybe the map didn't load well and somehow a sonic cannon had DPL ammo. You can fire DPL from a cannon as long as you can load it with it. Very rarely I experienced such errors in EU. For example I found a heavy plasma with heavy cannon ammo. I reloaded the game, and everything was okay.

[Zombie]

Even Survey Ships may carry a squad leader, and technicians may show up on Cruisers. However, I've never found DPL on small subs, not even in the end of the year when almost everybody has DPL on medium and large ships. It has got to be some modified game. Aliens never do reaction shots with DPL. This story is suspicious.

 

And I noticed the staff on alien subs is race dependant. For example a gill man Escort has only soldiers, an aquatoid Escort has suad leaders and soldiers.

I'll point you to my Alien Deployment thread in this forum, especially post #10. Survey Ships cannot carry a squad leader, ever. That's because that craft is only setup to carry soldiers and all the races have a soldier rank. Technicians can show up on a Cruiser, but only if it's manned by Lobstermen as that's what is substituted for the missing medic rank.

 

Gillmen Escorts should have both Soldiers and Squad Leaders because that race has both ranks. If your craft didn't then I don't know what's up except that maybe the deployment numbers in the PSX exe are different.

 

Edit: Looks like the deployment values in the PSX exe is identical to the CE version. We haven't found the code which actually substitutes one rank for another one so I can't exactly back this up with hard data.

 

- Zombie

[NKF]

I don't think I ever got round to it, but I'll need to compile that table into a wiki table some time. Individualised table snippets for the various ships would be a good way to flesh out the individual sub pages too.

 

As for the reaction fired DPL, it's technically possible but rare. More from X-Com's perspective than the aliens - and it's nasty. Of course, if the alien's fired their DPL fired during their turn, then it's perfectly legal. It's easy to treat it as a reaction shot, though to be more precise it's an action shot.

 

But the attacks from the seams in the back of the Triton? Horrible things. My team usually gets sniped on port missions from there. And if they toss a grenade through, the whole back of the Triton is wiped out just to get at the rear commander. Funny, but annoying. It's often best not to keep anyone too close to the back wall of the sub.

 

- NKF

[Alienated]

Survey Ships cannot carry a squad leader, ever.

Very true. I wanted to mean Escort. Now I mean, and I mean it, even Escorts may carry a squad leader. Maybe I am getting senile for mistaking the two subs. And for some reason, the smaller sub looks a bit bigger than the small one on the battlescape.

[Zombie]

Very true. I wanted to mean Escort. Now I mean, and I mean it, even Escorts may carry a squad leader. Maybe I am getting senile for mistaking the two subs. And for some reason, the smaller sub looks a bit bigger than the small one on the battlescape.

Yes, the Survey Ship and the Escort are indeed mixed up. I made a patch for this a while ago (it only applies to the computer version, not PSX obviously).

 

So you were right the first time: in a pure unmodified game there will (always) be Squad Leaders on a Survey Ship. The game is just using the Escort Ship map for the Survey Ship and vice versa. This isn't what the programmers had in mind though, it's a bug that was overlooked. At least it's a fairly simple fix for the computer. For the PSX, you would have to reburn your game CD after fixing it.

 

- Zombie

[MhBlis]

I didnt actually know about the seems in the back. That would explain some odd deaths i had over the years.

 

And DPL reaaction shots do happen. And yeah I've found sonic cannons with DPL ammo which is always great fun. And the occasional Gauss pistol with dart ammo

 

 

Though sadly this came in the front door during the middle of my tanks movement.

__________

l........x........l

l ................ l

l ......._____ l

A

Excuse my terrible ASCII but thats where is hit after coming in the door from direction A.

 

Though it has been pointed out to me that my cd may be on it's last legs and corrupting the installs. This is what happened I just found it funny since it was my first game in a long time.

[silencer_pl]

About that death inside a sub. You know that in EU hiding behind a wall made you pretty protected by explosive damage. In TFTD it is no more safe behind a wall, therefore a Triton hull will not protect you against DPLs and grenades unless it explodes above it.

[Alienated]

So you were right the first time

It was really my error. Now I know why I mistook them: because I almost always mistake the Small Scout and the Medium Scout in Enemy Unknown. When I don't concentrate enough, I call the Medium Scout Small Scout because the Medium Scout is small (size) in the Geoscape.

 

And yeah I've found sonic cannons with DPL ammo which is always great fun.

Now I am almost sure that happened in the reported situation too. Your squad was shot by a sonic weapon loaded with disruptor ammo.

[silencer_pl]

What next - psionic lobsters that are immune to thermal shocks ?

[MhBlis]

See just shows you those aliens really are advanced. They've taken their own weapons and made them even better. I mean DPL's with even better acc, less cost to use and weight. Where as here at X-com we figured out how to put dart gun ammo in our gauss pistols.

[Knan]

Where as here at X-com we figured out how to put dart gun ammo in our gauss pistols.

 

Wonderful what the beancounters can do when they need to stretch the budget for a few more days until the end of the month... expensive, those gauss rounds.

[MhBlis]

See now if I was incharge I'd have taught our people how to throw rocks. Or loose bits of trash/ They cant be any less effective than those dart pistols.

 

Though I have to admit that the new scroched earth policy is working well for me. Turns out my men are better at throwing than at shooting so now I just make sure there is a grenade hit on every square of the visible map. Then move forward rinse repeat. Sadly the cruise liner was less than impressed with this tactic and sent me a letter with naughty words in it. But hey I got rid of their infestation.

[Zombie]

You sunk my battleship! lol

 

- Zombie

[MhBlis]

Brillaint. Drum roll please.

 

You know how they Cockroaches will survive a nucklear blast. Well on veteran a they will survive two sonic pulsars and a magna blast. And comeon it's not fair that they get to shoot back. Thats not how the game is played.

[chiasaur11]

Brillaint. Drum roll please.

 

You know how they Cockroaches will survive a nucklear blast. Well on veteran a they will survive two sonic pulsars and a magna blast. And comeon it's not fair that they get to shoot back. Thats not how the game is played.

 

Right.

 

The name of the game is freeze tag, knifey spoony, or, in the absence of stabbing or freezing implements "run away".